Some recent items of interest related to the Review of US Human Space Flight Plans (aka Augustine) Committee and its work:
- The Orlando Sentinel reports today that a subcommittee of the overall committee has asked NASA about “both minor tweaks and ‘wholesale’ changes” to Constellation, including perhaps shifting to a single-rocket architecture than the current Ares 1 and 5 approach.
- The committee as dropped plans to continue a series of site visits, according to Aerospace Daily, instead focusing on a set of public meetings July 28-30 in Huntsville, Houston, and Cocoa Beach, and a final one August 5 in Washington. (Official committee schedule.) There are also a series of “fact-finding meetings” scheduled for next week.
- Committee chairman Norm Augustine will hold a media teleconference this Friday to talk about the progress the committee has made so far.
- The current review is hardly the only examination of the future of NASA and US space policy in recent years. In this week’s issue of The Space Review, Edward Ellegood picks out some recommendations from previous reports that might be relevant to the current review.
Given Obama is in deep trouble with his fiscal actions, gutting the VSE was a foregone conclusion for the A-Team. Shannon said that the Obama budgets, and prior year’s budgets didn’t support Ares I and Ares V. So “what now” is the big question. I hear Obama’s people talking about the ISS in a positive way whereas I don’t ever hear of them talk of going to the moon. At a minimum Ares V is deferred indefinitely.
Ares I is still possible though since its design and problems are well known now unlike the paper rockets Direct and NSC which would have to go thru a couple years of design iterations before getting to the point Ares I is at now. Plus Ares I will definitely get you to the ISS.
EELV is here and now and can definitely do the job of carrying humans to the ISS. Obama never did care for the VSE anyway so why fund it at all? Let some other administration carry that burden is what I think he has in mind.
Ares I vs. EELV is what I think the decision will come down to. Cost will be the driver too and for that I bet EELV gets the nod and all that money spent on 5 segments solids and possibly J2-X gets flushed down the George Bush wasteful spending hole.
“Given Obama is in deep trouble with his fiscal actions”
While I’m no fan of the Reinvestment Act, to be fair to the Administration, the large majority of the coming deficits are driven by the baby boomer generation and decades of past decisions on Medicare and Social Security. For the most part, the White House is inheriting this problem, not creating it. But it remains to be seen if they’ll take any serious steps to alleviate, instead of exacerbate, the annual federal deficit.
“gutting the VSE was a foregone conclusion for the A-Team.”
Evidence?
None of the references in Mr. Foust’s original post say anything about the Augustine Committee “gutting the VSE”.
“Shannon said that the Obama budgets, and prior year’s budgets didn’t support Ares I and Ares V.”
Because Ares costs have grown so much. As you say, the “prior year’s budgets” under the Bush II Administration wouldn’t have supported current Ares costs, either.
“I hear Obama’s people talking about the ISS…”
What “Obama people”?
You mean the nominees for NASA Administrator and Deputy Administrator? They have names, you know.
“At a minimum Ares V is deferred indefinitely.”
And that’s bad because…?
“Ares I is still possible though since its design and problems are well known…”
Ares I’s issues are not well understood at all. Heck, the Air Force won’t even grant NASA permission to launch Ares I-X because of the unknown impact of its thrust oscillation on the vehicle’s range safety systems. See:
http://www.aviationnewsreleases.com/2009/07/vibration-analysis-delays-ares-i-x.html
“now unlike the paper rockets Direct”
An actual Ares I vehicle, with a 5-segment first stage and working J-2X upper stage, is as much a paper design as DIRECT. In fact, it’s more so since DIRECT uses existing engines and doesn’t require the development of a new 5-segment motor or a new J-2X engine.
“and NSC”
NSC?
“Plus Ares I will definitely get you to the ISS.”
For now, but the margins are slipping again. And Ares I still can’t get Orion to the Moon. See:
http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2009/07/constellation-top-risks-orion-loses-unmanned-capability/
“EELV is here and now and can definitely do the job of carrying humans to the ISS.”
And the Moon.
“Obama never did care for the VSE anyway so why fund it at all?”
Evidence?
You do realize that Administration’s five-year budget for NASA includes tens of billions of dollars of spending on Constellation, right?
“Ares I vs. EELV is what I think the decision will come down to.”
Why do you think that when the Orlando Sentinel article that Mr. Foust referenced states the the Augustine Committee has asked NASA to analyze a Shuttle-derived heavy launch vehicle concept?
FWIW…
NSC=Not Shuttle C, you’ve heard of that right?
See this weeks Aviation Week for photos of hardware being sliced and diced for Ares I. Its further along than either Direct or NSC…by a couple years.
The Air force has not said Ares I-X is unsafe to fly. It has said they have concerns and NASA must address them before it flies. I imagine they had concerns about a great many new vehicles before they launched from the cape over the last few decades.
Why invoke the A-Team unless Obama wanted cover to change course? Obama was dead set against the VSE prior to the Florida primary and in fact said take billions from Nasa and give to education. I think that counts for something since at that time he was just getting momentum as a candidate. Then changed course for the votes once the Fl primary came along. Now we’ll see soon enough what the A-Team recommends and if Obama will pay attention. But as I said, the man has just hit 1 trillion in debt for this year on July 14, a record. Half from his so called stimulus of January 20, 2009. Far more to come as Obama retools healthcare and other big programs. So yes, Obama has a fiscal emergency and I’ll take bets that Nasa loses more budget, small though its budget is.
Sure Ares I and V costs have grown, shocker isn’t it? Now the reason the A-Team won’t go with Direct or NSC is their costs will grow significantly too and of course their schedule will creep to the right as well just as soon as design cycles are performed over the next year…should either be picked by Obama. Both will have to go thru time consuming PDR’s and CDR’s like any other metal bending NASA project and surely as that happens costs and schedule will grow.
Yes I realize Obama has 10’s of billions for Constellation….now. But again why invoke the A-team unless you want to change direction and lower the costs? Given the growing fiscal problems he must deal with today it doesn’t take genius to realize NASA is in for less and less money over the next few years.
Yes Mr. Tom, the article said the A-Team asked Nasa to investigate other options. So what? At the end of the day, my hunch, belief is those will come up a cropper and not be recommended because of cost and schedule uncertainty. The EELV will have the most credibility as an alternative since they are the only flying rockets today. For an administration that needs to reign in costs, the EELV’s flight status is a powerful enabler.
Ares I can’t be counted out either. Sure its costs of grown and it will be an expensive one too if Ares V is never built. But it will do the ISS mission has is. It would have been much further along had Nasa budgets not been cut over the years. Its challenges with weight are par for any rocket. Its challenges with issues such oscillations and thrust vectoring are nothing surprising given the complexity of rockets. Other rockets had issues too, some found in design, some found in flight, see first flight Delta IV. The fact that Ares I is far along and its components are in testing right now suggests it can’t be tossed aside easily. I can see the A-Team supporting Ares I while recommending a deferment of Ares V. Saves lots of new money even though Ares I will be a woefully expensive beast to amoritze. Kind of like the B-2.
richardb: I totally agree with your statements. Given the now $1 trillion a year USG debt growth, I predict that the A-Team will give cover to
cut out any moon option for VSE. And as a note, it also means no “go directly to Mars” or an astroid mission. There goes the reason for Ares 5.
This weakens the need of the 5 segment “common” SRB for Ares 1 (and
correspondingly weakens the case for Ares I). It is also my opinion that
“no moon” option means no chance of Jupiter Direct or another shuttle
derived design.
With low-earth orbit the only one left, you have Ares I vs. EELV. With no development done on EELV yest for Orion, I predict promising development cost and schedule will be proposed that is lower (much lower
probably) than Ares 1. However, extrapolate 5 years from know and the blogs will be filled about EELV vs [insert idea here].
I say stop the 30+ years of dangling the “travel beyond low Earth orbit”
carrot that the Government has done. Kill manned flight and it would end
the meaningless and pointless arguments on pro/con Ares, pro/con Jupiter Direct, pro/con Some kind of derived shuttle, …. The arguments
are pointless because nothing will ultimately happen.
I’m sorry if this is a bit off-topic but I hate to see numbers abused. The discussion of trillion dollar deficits being a new thing under the Obama administration is off-base. I realize that the that the AP ran a headline “Budget deficit tops $1 trillion for first time” a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, this headline is wrong or, at best, very misleading.
In the last fiscal year, fiscal year 2008 (October 1, 2007 to September 30, 2008), the US borrowed over $1 trillion dollars. On the last business day of fiscal year 2007 (September 28, 2007) the outstanding public debt of was $9.007 trillion dollars and by the last day of fiscal year 2008 (September 30, 2008) the outstanding public debt was $10.024 trillion. The difference is $1.017 trillion dollars, which the US borrowed during fiscal year 2008. This data comes directly from the Bureau of Public Debt in the US Treasury Department (http://www.publicdebt.treas.gov/).
The operative word in the headline is “budgetâ€. The official budget deficit for fiscal year 2008 was $455 billion. The problem is that the US budgets the way Enron budgeted. Inconvenient borrowing has been moved off-budget. The wars: off-budget. Rebuilding after Katrina: off-budget. The bailouts: off-budget. And so on. The difference is more than half a trillion dollars last year. Most people would think of the actual deficit as the increase in public debt over time. The currently reported “budget†deficit is little more than an accounting fiction.
It can be claimed that the Bush administration had a peak budget deficit of $455 billion. However, during its term the public debt increased by $4.899 trillion (January 19, 2001 to January 20, 2009), which is an average value of $612 billion. Note that the actual average is a third greater than the peak budget value. During the last year alone of the Bush administration (January 18 , 2008 to January 20, 2009) the public debt increased by $1.438 trillion dollars.
The US’s fiscal problems are getting worse under the Obama administration but they didn’t start there. Until there is some honest accounting, I don’t see the situation improving.
MJE – there never was a reason or a need for Ares V, even for going to the moon. And there certainly wasn’t a need for Ares 1. An open architecture, using EELVs, and prop depots, and we start to have the beginnings of a spacefaring society.
Prop depots always made more sense than Heavy Lift. And I bet good money that prop depots end up being featured in the final Augustine Commission report.
I hope Augustine commision has access to this page ?
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/solarsystem/vision_concepts.html
It would have been much further along had Nasa budgets not been cut over the years.
There is zero evidence for this. If there is one NASA program that has not suffered for lack of budget over the past few years, it is Ares 1.
Its challenges with weight are par for any rocket.
Perhaps for any poorly managed rocket development with inadequate margins up front, and of a poorly though-through concept.
Its challenges with issues such oscillations and thrust vectoring are nothing surprising given the complexity of rockets.
The whole point of Ares 1 was that it wasn’t supposed to be complex. It was supposed to be “safe, simple, soon.” That it is certainly no longer either simple or soon (and the jury remains out whether or not it is safe) is another indicator that the concept was not adequately thought through before choosing it.
Other rockets had issues too, some found in design, some found in flight, see first flight Delta IV.
All rockets have issues. That doesn’t mean that we can excuse away particularly intractable ones with any particular design. Ares 1 never made much sense, and I can’t imagine the Augustine panel being so incompetent as to allow it to continue.
I bet a 6 pack of Fat Tire that the A-Team makes no recommendation to use orbital fuel depots. Pie in the sky isn’t their trade marks. They are serious people dealing with serious problems.
I understand that the Ares I 5-segment first stage is getting its first test firing August 25 out in Utah. Plus a scale model of Ares I gets launched in a couple months, manufacturing of test articles is underway for Ares I and J2-X component testing has been underway for months. Remember that when somebody tells you Ares I is just a paper rocket. It may be a lousy design but they are bending metal on it and they’ve got a good 2 year head start over Direct or NSC.
richardb,
I bet a 6 pack of Fat Tire that the A-Team makes no recommendation to use orbital fuel depots. Pie in the sky isn’t their trade marks. They are serious people dealing with serious problems.
1. Provided you change the word recommendation to option (because there charter doesn’t allow for recommendations), I’ll take that bet
2. Why do you consider fuel depots to be pie in the sky? The tech/programatic risk needed to be retired is not that huge, and there are plenty of first generation prop depot suggestions that would work just fine, that don’t need something on the scale of an ISS system
3. Its worth noting the commission members, some of whom might very well be agreeable to Prop depot
4. The charter has among its requirements to stimulate commercial activity, and Prop depots would certainly do that.
Zero evidence that budget cuts have delayed progress on Ares I?
Try this “Back in April 2008 the then NASA exploration systems mission directorate associate administrator (AA) Richard Gilbrech told the US House of Representatives space and aeronautics subcommittee, “we estimate that for every $100 million reduction we lose a month,” when referring to a reduction in funds due to a possible year long continuing resolution (CR)” From http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/hyperbola/2009/02/nasa-claws-back-funding-lost-t.html
Or this http://www.flightglobal.com/articles/2007/02/13/212032/nasa-fears-cuts-will-delay-orion.html
Its should be kind of obvious that budget cuts have delayed Ares I whether its PDR/CDR or all the rest of their major milestones. Usually early year budget cuts on government projects = higher costs and lost schedule. Just about every time. Through out recorded history.
Ares I may be a bad design, I’m not qualified to say, I’d defer to those with years of experience designing, testing and building rockets. There is controversy on Ares I merits and the A-Team will give a honest precis of the facts, of that I’m sure. I would hope that if after their review, the A-Team favorably recommends Ares I compared to Direct, NSC or EELV that critics, without relevant engineering degrees and on the job experiences, will ease up and accept their findings.
What I’m gathering from all this is that the “A-Team” (gotta love that) is asking for an assessment of something like the Ares V started out; E.G. existing ET modified for inline with n x RS-68 engines and 2 x 4seg RSRBs. Which is also what Direct started out like. I don’t think they are particularly worried about total payload nor are they worried about the crew & cargo issue at this time.
We are probably going to see the A-Team provide the Administration with the options of goals (extend ISS, Moon, NEO, etc) and show that the goals will require sets of LV options. It will be in the Administrations hands then.
Simberg, more evidence that budget cuts have slowed down Ares I:
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story.jsp?id=news/Engine071509.xml&headline=PWR%20Offers%20Shuttle%20Engine%20Alternative&channel=space
Money quote
“Maser says Rocketdyne also has briefed the Augustine panel on the status of its J-2X upper stage engine, which completed a critical design review last November and remains on schedule. “We could be going even faster, but because of funding restrictions and [other] priorities we’ve been asked to slow down a little bit and stretch our program out,” he says. PWR is recommending that J-2X development continue, but has also told the Augustine panel that it could develop a different-sized upper-stage engine if needed.”
Hate to burst your bubble, but there is plenty of evidence that Ares I would be further along had the dollars flowed more freely. As I think you’ll agree, for government programs, the longer a program takes the more it costs. For sure money shortages can’t account for the entire Ares I higher price tag, but it’s a significant component.
Mr Valyn, the problem with prop depots is its never been done and the hunt for Obama and Nasa is to get to LEO asap and cheaply. Don’t need prop depots for that. If Obama surprises me and endorses a funding chunk for the Moon, then money spent making prop depots work is money not spent on big boosters needed in any case. Commercial space gets a big boost just in supplying the ISS, again don’t need the costs of proving out prop depots for that.
Big boosters are not “needed in any case”. And depots give a much bigger boost to commercial space.
richardb – well, since he already did endorse moon, you should already be dealing with your surprise.
Secondly,
money spent making prop depots work is money not spent on big boosters needed in any case
huh??
Not laying off the entire STS workforce may well be needed to win Congressional support for lunar return.
Heavy lift may not be needed from a technological perspective (after all a Proton/Soyuz + prop depot lunar architecture would be equally capable and far less expensive than an EELV +prop depot lunar architecture) however heavy lift may well be essential to win the votes needed for Congress to fund a lunar program.
Terminate the shuttle stack and I predict a significant budget cut for NASA human spaceflight leaving NO money for a lunar program or propellant depots.
Also, whether Ares 1 “could have worked” is no longer relevant. Politically, I can’t see Obama “sticking with the stick” therefore what might have been isn’t worth discussing in the context of what will be.
Therefore, I predict the leading A-Team choices as being:
(a) EELV to LEO only with a greatly reduced NASA human spaceflight budget (no depots, no lunar program, no beyond LEO missions); or
(b) some variation of DIRECT or side-mount “not shuttle C”
= = =
Of course, I prefer DIRECT and propellant depots working in tandem.
We can do the Moon with either but with BOTH depots and DIRECT we can actually do worthwhile stuff once we get there.
For Shelby MSFC staffing is paramount and for Nelson it’s STS workforce considerations. I’m not sure the rest of Congress may have strong feelings either way. I think most people prefer large rockets instinctively. It’s the Sir Mixalot argument: I like big rockets and I cannot lie.
Republicans (other than Shelby) will have a preference for commercial space, Democrats may want to spend the money on social programs instead. The White House seems to prefer both.
It will depend on whether there are enough people in a position of power who care enough to counter Shelby and Nelson. I don’t think we can count on Congress, unless it wants to cut NASA’s budget significantly. Obama does seem to care enough about space to establish a Commission, which suggests he is willing to spend some political capital to defeat Shelby if necessary. If the President of the United States cares enough and presents good arguments to a friendly Congress I don’t see how a ranking member of a Senate Committee can stop him. On the other hand, Nelson got his way on the nomination of Bolden, even though Obama managed to get Garver in as his deputy.
We can do the Moon with either but with BOTH depots and DIRECT we can actually do worthwhile stuff once we get there.
EELV + depots is good enough for that, no need for DIRECT. I’ve yet to see a single technical reason why BFRs are necessary. To be sure they offer some advantages, but so does every other viable architecture. I see no show-stoppers.
…the problem with prop depots is its never been done and the hunt for Obama and Nasa is to get to LEO asap and cheaply.
Putting a crew on top of the world’s largest and longest solid rocket has never been done, either, and NASA is finding out why. It’s been been a very expensive lesson. And the notion that anything resembling Constellation gets us to LEO ASAP and cheaply is (to use the most polite word possible) ludicrous.
It also suggests the people who propose using an SDLV as a LEO vehicle realise an SDLV needs a mission ASAP, or it will mean all-EELV. That’s why there is talk of a crewed Not-Shuttle-C and of launching bunches of EELV-sized payloads on a single SDLV flight.
Launchers are just a fraction of cost for a robust HSF program (I’d say 20%). Direct, ‘Not Shuttle C’, Shuttle-C, or Ares. That choice doesn’t matter, as they are all job programs. The majority of the costs is being little discussed (landers, transfer vehicles, CRVs, ISRU, life support, astro. training, Earth support centers, etc.. etc…. Perhaps harsh… but NASA should just not be operating launchers, and, yes, it should lay off the personnel that’s not needed (standing army, etc…). That’s the only way they’ll have some money left for a ‘mission’ (which I’m not sure about either)
There is no current or projected ‘long’ money for the Moon, or, god bless space cadet’s tender soul… Mars. If it goes as it is going now NASA will just end up with an HLV and the ‘saved from layoffs’ standing army to polish its thrusters year in and year out (1 dude polishes, 5 watch him — just like they do on the orbiter now) it as it’ll have nothing to launch.
Perhaps we’ll squeeze a flight out of it and drop a flag on one of the lunar poles, and then bugger off as we did during the Apollo. We’d be lucky if we still can keep the ISS after all this extravaganza.
If MSL is any indication, then (landers, transfer vehicles, CRVs, ISRU, life support, astro. training, Earth support centers, ) by NASA will not fit into any reasonable budget either.
So even if Ares and Orion are sucking all the air out of the room now, getting rid of them will only bring about another boondoggle.
NASA needs to be disbanded and some pieces reassembled to something more sensible.
“NASA needs to be disbanded and some pieces reassembled to something more sensible.”
Well, I agree with that. And it’s not like federal agencies are sacred cows, plenty agencies have been disbanded and/or rearranged as events demanded in the past. NASA is a dinosaur with unclear mission and bloated structure (just look at the amount of centers and job programs it’s running)
Here is a link that gets to the heart of Obama’s commitment to beyond LEO.
http://www.floridatoday.com/article/20090715/NEWS02/907150313/1006/news01/Moon+trip+may+wait+until+2028
I say again, if he’s committed to humans outside the ISS, I’ll be surprised.
So far I saw some vague talk about the moon, especially before the election. How about some money after the election? Questionable.
richardb: “why invoke the A-team unless you want to change direction and lower the costs?”
The current NASA Ares-based plan has been bursting budgets during both the Bush and Obama Administrations. Therefore it makes sense to have the committee look for better options that would fit within the exploration budget. In fact, that’s one of the points of the committee. From the charter: “The identification and characterization of these options should address the following objectives: … d) fitting within the current budget profile for NASA exploration activities.” That’s not “cover”; it’s one of the purposes of the committee given by the Administration.
“I can see the A-Team supporting Ares I while recommending a deferment of Ares V.”
I suppose that’s possible, and in fact it’s an outcome many of us have anticipated since about 2005 given certain disfunctions in the ESAS approach, but by itself it doesn’t address the objectives of the committee:
“a) expediting a new U.S. capability to support utilization of the International Space Station (ISS)” – Ares 1 can’t get to the ISS faster than Ares 1. Even if Ares V money went to Ares I, even Dr. Griffin says that throwing money at Ares 1 would not significantly expedite its operational phase.
“b) supporting missions to the Moon and other destinations beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO)” – Ares 1 isn’t enough to meet this objective, either.
“c) stimulating commercial space flight capability” – Ares 1 isn’t commercial.
By itself keeping Ares 1 and removing Ares V also doesn’t address the other objectives of the committee: “the appropriate amount of research and development and complementary robotic activities needed to make human space flight activities most productive and affordable over the long term”, “appropriate opportunities for international collaboration”, and “evaluate options for extending ISS operations beyond 2016″.
MJE: “I predict that the A-Team will give cover to cut out any moon option for VSE.”
If the Administration wanted cover to cut out any moon option for VSE, why would one of the main objectives of the committee be “supporting missions to the Moon and other destinations beyond low-Earth orbit (LEO)”? Given that objective, I would expect all of the options presented by the committee to include some sort of Moon missions.
Also, as Jeff wrote: “Committee chairman Norm Augustine will hold a media teleconference this Friday to talk about the progress the committee has made so far.” The 40th anniversary of the flight of Apollo 11 (launch July 16, 1969, Moon landing July 20) would be an odd time to have a media teleconference on the progress of the committee if they were leaning towards removing the Moon goal.
richardb – we were never going to get the level of funding needed to make the current plan working. NASA should never have assumed it was going to get that level of funding.
That doesn’t mean that Obama is opposed to humans beyond LEO – it means he isn’t going to go on a spending spree to get them beyond LEO (which has been the case for a long time, with a long line of presidents).
Stop equating the idea that the current plan is the best plan, and the only plan, for getting humans to the moon.
“I would hope that if after their review, the A-Team favorably recommends Ares I compared to Direct, NSC or EELV that critics, without relevant engineering degrees and on the job experiences, will ease up and accept their findings.”
Not a chance, reetaard. We’ll be rubbing the Ares I failure into your face for quite a while as well.
“NSC=Not Shuttle C… ”
It’s called Shuttle side-mount. No one uses the acronym “NSC†in reference to this vehicle.
NSC is the old acronym for the National Space Council. NSC is the current acronym for the National Security Council. Both were/are White House bodies.
“… you’ve heard of that right?”
No, I’ve not heard of a vehicle acronym that only you use.
“See this weeks Aviation Week for photos of hardware being sliced and diced for Ares I.”
This article?
http://www.aviationweek.com/aw/generic/story_channel.jsp?channel=space&id=news/aw070609p1.xml
There’s nothing in this article resembling Ares I hardware under development. As the article describes, MSFC is still experimenting with: a wonky J-2X gas generator, a thermal insulation application technique to save vehicle mass, a friction stir-welding technique that Boeing might use to build the upper-stage, and a LOX tank bellows contraption that might mitigate the thrust oscillation issue. All of these are experiments, not development hardware, and none of these experiments would be needed if NASA was pursuing a vehicle — including DIRECT, Shuttle side-mount, or EELV — that didn’t require new engines, that didn’t have such narrow margins, and didn’t induce such a terrible acoustic environment.
Heck, the article even references how “hardware poor” the J-2X development program is, and that it won’t start engine tests at Stennis until 2011. And as the article states, that’s the pacing item for the entire Ares I project. There’s little to nothing in development yet for Ares I. The vehicle hasn’t even completed its preliminary design review (despite five years of work), nevertheless the critical design review necessary to enter development.
“The Air force has not said Ares I-X is unsafe to fly.”
It’s not the Air Force that’s saying that Ares I-X is not safe to launch. NASA’s own analysis and documentation is saying that Ares I-X is not safe to launch:
“According to internal NASA documents, shaking strong enough to knock out the self-destruct mechanism could occur 70 to 90 seconds after liftoff. Vibrations that could kill the steering-system components happen later, at almost two minutes into the flight.”
See http://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/local/orl-nasa-rocket-troubles-062809,0,4229034.story.
The Chief Engineer for the Ares I project has said for a year that:
“… Ares I-X’s components are also in the TO [thrust oscillation] firing line, with the most concerning element referencing the Flight Termination System (FTS) – which may require a range waiver due to the potential TO could exceed the components certification, and the threat of vibrating them out of action.”
See http://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2008/07/chief-engineer-outlines-ares-i-x-issues-includes-thrust-oscillation/
The Air Force is just forcing NASA to finally face up to its own analysis and issues on Ares I-X. The test won’t take place on an Air Force range until NASA does so.
“Why invoke the A-Team unless Obama wanted cover to change course?… But again why invoke the A-team unless you want to change direction and lower the costs?”
Do you really think that someone of Augustine’s stature (nevertheless the other astronauts, heads of companies, and leading scientists on the committee) would agree to front a body that’s just going to rubber stamp a course of action that the White House has predetermined?
The White House creates blue-ribbon panels to fix broken programs. The last NASA-related one was the President’s Advisory Committee on the Redesign of the Space Station (the Vest Committee). At the outset of the Clinton Administration, eight-odd years had been wasted without moving the space station program into development and the program was looking at tens of billions of dollars of cost growth. The Vest Committee was created to fix the broken space station program
Constellation is in a very similar, broken condition today, and the Augustine Committee has been convened to fix it. The program has spent five years in design yet its first two elements (Ares I and Orion) aren’t past preliminary design review, nevertheless the critical design review needed to enter development. Ares I development costs have ballooned from $14 billion at the beginning of the program to $28 billion in 2006 to $35-40 billion (depending on which NASA manager you ask) in 2009. Constellation costs through first lunar landing have grown from $57 billion to $92 billion by NASA’s own estimates. The program’s costs have to come down, but because the program is busting its budget, not because of some nefarious plan by the White House to cut the program’s budget. (In fact, the White House’s terms of reference for the Augustine Committee explicitly call for options that fit the existing budget, not some future, reduced budget.)
There’s no need to resort to conspiracies to justify the existence of the Augustine Committee. Given how broken Constellation is, it’s very clear why the White House created this blue-ribbon committee.
“Obama was dead set against the VSE…”
The President has never stated anything of the sort. The campaign proposed cutting Constellation at one point in time. Constellation is not the same thing as the VSE, and the campaign is not the same thing as the candidate.
“Sure Ares I and V costs have grown, shocker isn’t it?… Sure its costs of grown and it will be an expensive one too if Ares V is never built.”
The magnitude of the cost growth is shocking. Ares I costs have more than doubled. Constellation costs have nearly doubled. No program can (or should) survive that kind of ridiculous cost growth.
“Now the reason the A-Team won’t go with Direct or NSC is their costs will grow significantly too”
Are you serious?
Shuttle side-mount is ~$7 billion to develop. Its costs would have to grow by at least a factor of five before it caught up with the $35-40 billion Ares I.
DIRECT costs ~$8 billion to develop (or ~$12 billion including a new upper stage for Ares V-class launches). Its costs would have to grow by at least a factor of four (or three) before it caught up with the $35-40 billion Ares I.
“and of course their schedule will creep to the right as well just as soon as design cycles are performed over the next year”
Again, are you serious?
Shuttle side-mount starts flying in 2013. Its 2.5-year development schedule would have to triple before catching up with Ares I/Orion’s likely (65% confidence) first flight in 2017.
DIRECT allows Apollo 8-type circumlunar flights as early as 2014. Constellation’s schedule has slipped so much than lunar flights aren’t even on the horizon anymore.
“…should either be picked by Obama.”
But you just said that the Augustine Committee won’t pick DIRECT or Shuttle side-mount. Are you saying that the President is going to pick an option not presented by Augustine?
“Yes Mr. Tom, the article said the A-Team asked Nasa to investigate other options. So what? At the end of the day, my hunch, belief… Ares I can’t be counted out either.â€
Your hunches and beliefs are at odds with what’s being reported in the press. The fact is that the Augustine Committee has asked NASA to evaluate DIRECT-like concept, not to refine Ares I.
“It would have been much further along had Nasa budgets not been cut over the years.â€
The Ares I budget has yet to be cut. In fact, it’s been added to by cutting other NASA programs.
“Its challenges with weight are par for any rocket.â€
Negative mass margins, as is the current case for Ares I lunar missions, are not and should not be par for the course on any launch vehicle.
“Its challenges with issues such oscillations and thrust vectoring are nothing surprising given the complexity of rockets.â€
If thrust oscillation and thrust vectoring problems of this magnitude were common, then they should show up on Atlas, Delta, Falcon, Soyuz, Ariane, H-IIA, DIRECT, Shuttle side-mount, etc. They don’t.
“Other rockets had issues too, some found in design, some found in flight, see first flight Delta IV.”
This is very faulty reasoning that compares apples to oranges. There’s a huge difference between the Delta IV’s one-time cavitation issue, which was fixed with minor changes to the propellant feed and caused an accident that was contained within the range, and NASA’s analysis showing that Ares I will have such powerful thrust oscillation issues that both its flight termination system and thrust vector control system are in danger of being disabled and landing the vehicle in a populated area.
“The fact that Ares I is far along and its components are in testing right now suggests it can’t be tossed aside easilyâ€
There are no Ares I flight components in testing. The project is still running experiments to find out how its flight components should be built.
“I can see the A-Team supporting Ares I while recommending a deferment of Ares V.â€
Based on what? Per the AvWeek article in Mr. Foust’s original post, the Augustine Committee has asked NASA to analyze an inline SDLV similar to DIRECT. There’s no evidence that they’re pursuing Ares I or deferring a heavy lift substitute for Ares V.
“Saves lots of new money even though Ares I will be a woefully expensive beast to amoritze.â€
There’s little commonality left between Ares I and Ares V. Expensive Ares I developments like the 5-segment SRB will have to be repeated for Ares V (now at a 5.5-segment SRB).
“Saves lots of new money…”
Not during the Obama Administration, it doesn’t. The vast majority of the tens of billions (with a “b”) of dollars in Constellation funding through the budget runout is going to feed Ares I and Orion. There’s only tens of millions (with an “m”) of dollars left for Ares V, Altair, etc. The White House has no great monetary incentive to terminate Ares V.
FWIW…
Major Tom, wrong about usage of NSC or “not shuttle c”
see here
http://www.nasawatch.com/archives/2009/07/farewell_ares_1.html
or
http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=17546.240
I don’t post at either sites and I didn’t coin the phrase.
As for hardware on Ares I, well I say you’re wrong and the Aviation week photo from this week’s magazine has a nice picture of a US bulkhead, an engineering sample sure, but obviously an exact manufacturing of existing engineering. ATK is firing the first 5 segment CLV next month. Saying its not so in 500 words doesn’t make it so.
“Major Tom, wrong about usage of NSC or “not shuttle c—
The articles referenced on your NASAWatch site don’t use the term “not Shuttle-C”, nevertheless “NSC”.
And posts on bulletin boards are hardly definitive references for common terminology.
“US bulkhead, an engineering sample sure, but obviously an exact manufacturing of existing engineering”
The common bulkhead is another experimental article to save mass, one of several experiments that have to work in order for Ares I to meet its performance targets. It’s not development hardware and these experiments wouldn’t be needed on other vehicles. Five years into the program, other launch vehicle options available to NASA would by building flight hardware by now (or have flown).
“ATK is firing the first 5 segment CLV next month.”
Ground-test SRB articles (whether 4-segment for Shuttle or this 5-segment) differ significantly from flight articles. And even if they were usually identical, this 5-segment that will differ significantly from the propellant geometry and grain types currently planned for the flight article.
“Saying its not so in 500 words doesn’t make it so.”
Pretending that experimental articles — ones that won’t fly and that will likely change significantly in design or be replaced entirely after PDR and CDR — are the same thing as development or flight hardware doesn’t change reality.
At this point and for the next couple years (or more), Ares I is an everchanging paper design dependent on a number of experiments going right before the vehicle can move into development. The project has not settled on a design, has not moved into development, and may never do so even in the absence of the Augustine Committee review given the number and magnitude of problems it’s facing.
FWIW…
Re: propellent depots
“Mr Valyn, the problem with prop depots is its never been done”
That depends on how you define propellent depots. ISS has been refueled multiple times by Russian Progress cargo missions, and orbital refueling and storage is the heart of a propellant depot.
Even a simple hypergolic propellant depot which uses well settled operational technology could be a boon to many different lunar flight architectures. It isn’t necessary to have a liquid hydrogen depot to get good use out of the propellant depot concept. In fact, a hypergolic depot would probably fit better into a commercial heavy system by easing the difficulty of even small payload rockets to profitably deliver propellant to a depot.
Re: Heavy Lift Vehicles (or “BFR”)
Some think HLV are actually counterproductive to VSE, while NASA and others seem to think HLV are indispensable. I think HLV fall into the category of nice to have and not need to have. In fact nuclear thermal and/or electric propulsion rockets, aerocapture and ISRU are more enabling technologies than an HLV could be.
However, Griffin was right when he said we already have an HLV stack, the Space Shuttle, and it would be a waste to throw it away. But when a supposedly shuttle derived cargo HLV morphs into the Ares V behemoth, it’s gone too far, and become a clean-sheet design waste of money.
Fortunately it seems sanity has reasserted itself at NASA with the ‘Not The Shuttle C’ concept (officially called the Shuttle-Derived Heavy Lift Launch Vehicle). This concept makes perfect sense for a cargo launch vehicle, though not a crew launch vehicle IMHO.
“Ares I would be further along had the dollars flowed more freely.”
When have “the dollars” not “flowed freely” for Ares I? For this statement to be true, then the Ares I budget would have to have been cut at some point in the past. When has that happened?
“Its should be kind of obvious that budget cuts have delayed Ares I whether its PDR/CDR or all the rest of their major milestones.”
Yeah, it’s that multi-billion dollar budget that’s holding back the Ares I PDR, not technical issues like the fact that first-stage SRB fragments will burn through Orion’s parachutes in the event of an abort 30-60 seconds into flight with near-100% guarantee of Orion fratricide.
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=31792
Just send more money…
“Ares I may be a bad design, I’m not qualified to say, I’d defer to those with years of experience designing, testing and building rockets.”
You don’t needs years of experience to figure this stuff out. What about low to negative mass margins, astronaut-shaking thrust oscillations, poor flight control, doubling or tripling costs, years behind schedule, and deadly launch abort scenarios doesn’t say “bad design”?
“Mr Valyn, the problem with prop depots is its never been done”
You do realize that ISS is part propellant depot and exchanges propellant with Soyuz, right?
“I say again, if he’s [President Obama] committed to humans outside the ISS, I’ll be surprised. So far I saw some vague talk about the moon, especially before the election.”
You do realize that the Moon and destinations beyond LEO were explicitly called out as one of the four major objectives in the White House’s terms of reference for the Augustine Committee, right?
FWIW…
Not only does ISS require propellant transfer (also provided by ATV by the way), the Russians have had this technology in continous use ever since Salyut-6 in 1978. The first US orbital experiment I know of was in 1984 on the Shuttle and more recently with Orbital Express. With cryogenic propellants (especially liquid hydrogen) this is believed to be more difficult, though not necessarily much more. But for storables this is very mature, proven, operational technology.
ISS propellant transfer is not cryogenic transfer which is the goal of a “prop depot” concept, at least the ones I’ve read. ISS propellant transfer is with hypergolics which are very stable compared to liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Cryogenic prop transfer hasn’t been done and will be devilish difficult in space considering how devilish it is at the Cape. For the ISS the prop transfer is smaller scale as its needed only for maintaining orbit. For moon or Mars missions, large prop depots are needed for significant delta vee and that will be new technology on a large scale. So no, ISS propellent transfer has little to do with whats needed for beyond earth orbit.
A hypergolics depot would be very useful in support of a hypergolic lander, provided the depot is based at L1/L2 or perhaps in LLO. You are right the scales needed are considerably greater, but even present transfer rates (~800 kg in about half an hour, fully automated) would be good enough.
In-flight refueling has been suggested as a precursor to depots. With that, your lander would essentially be a depot, so there would not be a need for a separate vehicle. Make it fully reusable and you’d need something like 80-100 mT of propellant. And no, it wouldn’t be large because these propellants are nice and dense, unlike liquid hydrogen.
Isn’t it funny how the the most recent dismissals richardb claims about propellent depots, were anticipated and refuted before he even posted them? I suppose we could repeat ourselves, but why bother since richardb didn’t pay attention in the first place?
I don’t easily tire of promoting propellant depots.
I’ve yet to hear strong arguments against depots or in favour of HLV that hold up to scrutiny. They sound mostly like generalisations of HLV, specifically SDLV and in-house NASA launchers.
Doh! I meant rationalisations, not generalisations.
While I know it won’t be an easy decision to scrap Ares for a different approach, I really think it’s the best option at this point. Really the only argument I’m seeing any more in favor of keeping the overbudget, underperforming Ares program running is along the lines of “well we’ve already put so much time and money we might as well stick with it”. Now maybe that’s a good enough reason for a crappy poker player to bet his last twenty bucks, or a father to drop a few thousand bucks trying to keep an already dead junker going a few more miles… but that logic doesn’t cut it for a space program. In a month we’ll have an answer from the AC but I already think they’ll be saying the same thing – Ares has got to go.
Switching to an alternate might be a bit of an embarrassment for the people who’ve spent the last few years building careers and reputations out of pushing Ares… but it will ultimately be better for us and most importantly could take precious months or (eternal optimist speaking here) maybe even a couple years off the timeline.